Chapter Biography of Fathers and Sons - Study Guide by Ivan Sergevevich Turgenev

and despite strict measures taken by the Russian government to minimize public mourning, the funeral train was met at every station by large crowds of mourners, and the funeral procession in St. Petersburg, where Turgenev had asked to be buried close to Belinsky, was said to have been (with the exception of that for Dostoyevsky two years later) the most impressive farewell to a private Russian citizen ever seen.

Those who knew him praised his honesty and generosity of spirit, his charm, enthusiasm and willingness to hear the opinions of others while not being afraid to express and defend his own views. He was a great conversationalist who could hold his own well even in the company of a great mind such as Flaubert, who paid tribute to his friend’s "distinction". He did not make attachments easily, but kept those he did, and although Pauline once called him "the saddest of men" he kept this facet of his personality under control with intelligence and irony. After Gogol’s death in 1852 Turgenev took his place as the leading figure in contemporary Russian literature, and by the 1870’s his fame had spread even as far as America. In 1878 he was elected vice-president of the International Literary Congress convened in Paris and in 1879 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of Civil Law by the University of Oxford, becoming the first novelist ever to be thus distinguished.